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Show FACE THE FACTS! Weeks Talks About Our Navy and National Defense. Iniisti on Military, Commercial, Financial Fin-ancial and Industrial Preparedness Let U Be Ready for Peace as Well ai War. f By JAMES B. MORROW, In the Philadelphia Record. NONE of the Weekses, save John Wlngate, the senator and the Massachusetts candidate for president tolling as they all did among the granite humps ot New Hampshlre was ever noted for his ac-. ac-. cumulation of cash or property. They were farmers mostly, beginning begin-ning with Leonard Weeks, who, emigrating emi-grating from England in 1656, became the head and source of the family. Agriculture sternly practiced among the embedded rocks and irremovable bowlders taught them to be resourceful resource-ful and to keep at least one eye open to opportunity. , So William D., the father of the senator, sen-ator, was a probate Judge, and once essayed to be a manufacturer. With the co-operation of neighbors, likewise alert and adventurous, he started a factory at Lancaster for making starch from potatoes. "I will never forget the look on my father's face," Captain WeekB told me, "when, on a Sunday morning, Just aa we were leaving church, we saw men and boys running down the street and heard them crying: 'The starch factory fac-tory Is burning.' Captain John Wlngate Weeks. "There was no Insurance the policy pol-icy had lapsed and the fire swept away all of my father's means and put a burdensome mortgage on his farm, two and a half miles in the country." If there had been a navy of a respectable re-spectable size in 1881 John Wlngate Weeks would now be a captain instead in-stead of g senator. Nor would he ever have become a banker and thus have set at naught all the traditions of the Weeks, family for self-respecting, capable and wholesome poverty. And yet a psychological analysis of Inherited traits might show that the senator comes naturally by his talents fer public affairs and finance. Any Inquiry into his personality must include in-clude the Wingates, the chief of whom, John, an Englishman, emigrated to i New Hampshire in 1660. The Weekses and the Wingates In-' termarried during the second, American Ameri-can generation the Weekses to continue con-tinue as farmers, with an excursion into potato starch, as has been recorded, re-corded, but the Wingates to become soldiers, preachers and statesmen. Paine Wlngate, for example, the great-grandson great-grandson of John, was a member of the Continental congress and later a senator from New Hampshire. I A Big Man Physically. John Wingate W-eeks of Massachusetts, Massachu-setts, in his name, therefore, goes back to the middle of the seventeenth century. cen-tury. Perhaps his gifts are equally as ancient. Wherever they originated, he has made good use of them. He is well-to-do but has less money, perhaps, per-haps, than is often represented anfl Republicans in Massachusetts have notified no-tified the country that he is their candidate can-didate for president. If he is nominated nomi-nated at Chicago in June, the main 'reason will have been that he is a ' business man. His candidacy, then, will be something entirely new in national na-tional politics. In his measurements. Captain Weeks Is a large man. A reasonable gue3S at his weight would be 250 pounds. His stature, perhaps, Is five feet and eleven inches. His eyes are gray and ;hls manner is frank and hearty. While at the naval academy he could slowly raise a 112-pound dumbbell above his head with his right hand. Then, kneeling kneel-ing with one leg. he could slowly raise an 87-pound dumbbell with his left hand. More than that he could, lower his hands to his shoulders and slowly and simultaneously put both dumbbells dumb-bells above his head the Becond time. A muscular youth, he was recommended recom-mended by his principal to the "prudential "pru-dential committee" that called at the academy In Lancaster on a hunt of a teacher for their district school. The school was then closed a group of ; the large hoys having carried the teacher into the road, slammed him down in the dirt and warned him never to return. "Lick 'em and lick 'em good," the prudential committee said. "We'll . back you up if you do." '. "The third day. Captain Weeks told me, "a big, red-faced boy took, his pen in hand and laboriously be , gan to write a letter- that Is. he was -seemingly engaged In wilting a let ter; as a matter of fact, he was show , Ing off before the school and experi minting with the new teacher. Whet erdered to put his pen and paper away, ho smiled around the room at the pupils, who had stopped working, work-ing, and then resumed his writing. "I took him by the collar, dragged him out of his seat and gave him a thorough whipping. He turned out to be the son of the chairman of the prudential committee. The old man never spoke to me again, not even when I met him in the road, he riding rid-ing in a buggy and I walking to or from my work." Went to Sea for Two Years. On his graduation at the Annapolis Naval Academy, young John Wlngate Wln-gate Weeks went to sea for a cruise of two years. Seventy men were in his class, but there was room for only 10 of them In the navy. The navy itself consisted of but five steam vessels ves-sels classed as first-rates, and they were obsolete and unfit for active duty. George Barnett, hla room-mate, went into the Marine Corps and is now a major general and the commandant com-mandant of that branch of the naval service. In Florida, where he had been engaged en-gaged as a surveyor on a railroad, the late Midshipman Weeks learned that an old firm in Boston was going out of business. One of the partners had died and another had become blind. Henry Hornblower, a son of one of the partners, and the youthful Mr. Weeks bought the business, the latter lat-ter borrowing the money with which : to begin his career as a banker and broker. Hornblower acted for the firm on the floor of the Boston Stock Exchange. Ex-change. Weeks kept the books and waited on the customers as they appeared. ap-peared. In a few years the two young men had offices all over New England and in cities as far away as Chicago. "I got my first valuable business idea from a famous New England dressmaker," Captain Weeks said to the writer of this articlr. "A friend who came to spend the night at our house was talking to Mrs. Weeks while I was reading a newspaper. I heard her say that she had bought a dress In Boston, and that soon after, on returning to the store, the proprietor, pro-prietor, noticing her at the counter, asked if she had purchased the dreBS she was wearing at his establishment. On learning that she had, he said: " 'It is not right. Please give your name and address to the clerk and we shall correct the matter at once.' A Story of Great Value. " 'But,' the voman replied, 'the dress is satisfactory to me. Whatever Is wrong is bo small that It Is not worth mentioning.' " 'Small to you, madam,' the ms,n answered, 'but very large to us.' " 'And do you know,' the woman told Mrs. Weeks, the dress was not only taken back, but it was kept and I was given a new one. "I repeated the story to my partner next day," Captain Weeks said, "and from that time onward we trief)" to please pur customers before we thought of ourselves and the probabla profits we could make In our trans actions." Three years ago, following at ones his election to the upper House of Congress, Captain Weeks sold out to his partners and disposed of every interest in-terest that might be thought, even in directly, to influence his Judgment as a lawmaker. It it said in New Eng. land that he has always been very careful about his reputation as a business busi-ness man. An anecdote told of him in State street, the Wall street of Boston, Bos-ton, shows how his sensitiveness to public opinion on one occasion proved highly profitable to his partner and himself. A run on a bank in which Captain Weeks was a director, though he owned but $900 of the stock, threatened, threat-ened, so he feared, to injure his standing stand-ing in the community. He spent a day and a night at the bank, pledged two-thirds of all the property he and his partner owned for the payment of tne bank's debts and put through a rehabilitating re-habilitating plan under which the shareholders were assessed 60 per cent, on their holdings. The bank was saved, but some of the frightened fright-ened shareholders sold out. Their Interests In-terests were promptly bought by Captain Weeks. The bank prospered and later was combin' " with other large banks. Boston financiers say that Mr. Hornblower and Mr. Weeks ultimately made $250,000 on the stock which they purchased when the bank seemed to be on th9 verge of ruin. When I asked Captain Weeks about the matter, he said: "I was a young man and couldn't afford to be a director di-rector in a bank that had closed its doors in the faces of its depositors, many of whom were poor and moBt of whom were small merchants and wage-earnera." "How," I asked him, inasmuch as he was a sailor himself once, and la now on terms of intimacy with many high officers, "would you describe tttf navy of the United States?" "At the outbreak of the war in Europe," Eu-rope," he answered, "our navy. In my opinion, was the second best in existence. exis-tence. Authorities for whom I hTa great respect did not agree with me. They ranked our navy third or fourth some giving France second placa and some believing Germany 'WM stronger at sea than ourselves. "I still think that in Bhips alone w were the equal of France or Germaay and much the superior of Japan. Our officers are the ablest in the world; our crews are the most intelligent. Na nation gives its officers the tralniaf that is given to the naval officers ot the United States. And the men la our ships, coming from farms and Tillages, Til-lages, In large part, are the flaeat v. morally and physically afloat, "In my days, back in 1880, let us say, the sailor on shore leave wh" returned to his ship sober was keelhauled or otherwise punished by his mates. Ail that has changed. Intoxicated sailors are see- no more on the atreeta. Our men are sober, serious and capable. When an estimate of any navy la made, the personnel, as well as tka ships, must be considered. Lessons of the War. "So I had thought that only Great Britain excelled us as a naval powssf it the outbreak of the war in Europe. Since the war started, France aad Germany have geen building ships. Our rank Just now, therefore, is appertain. ap-pertain. But we have a good navy. Still, It should be much larger." "Has the war taught the world asvy oaval lessons?" |